Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts announced today that Shawn Brixey will lead the institution as its new dean. Currently dean of the School of the Arts, Media, Performance, and Design at York University in Toronto, Brixey will take up the post on July 1.

“I am pleased to welcome Shawn Brixey to VCU as the new dean of our School of the Arts,” said VCU President Michael Rao. “In addition to being an accomplished artist, Shawn’s background as an educator, researcher, writer, and inventor makes him the perfect fit for our university. We all look forward to working with Shawn and are happy to have him as the leader of the nation’s number-one-ranked public school of the arts.”

Under Brixey’s leadership, the School of the Arts, Media, Performance, and Design at York University has repositioned its mission and focus toward collaborative, interdisciplinary, and technology-centered creative research. Previously, Brixey served as professor and the Floyd and Delores Jones Endowed Chair in Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he cofounded and directed the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media, and as a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he established and served as the inaugural chair of the Digital Media Program and was founding director of the Center for Digital Art and New Media Research (now the Berkeley Center for New Media).

“VCUarts is a truly path-breaking research community,” Brixey said. “I am honored by and excited about the opportunity to support its wonderful faculty and students. They are uniquely positioned to shape the frontiers of research and discovery at the boundaries of what the arts mean today, and how they will be inspired and lived tomorrow.”